Pathfinder - The Crossbowman Fighter Handbook

Disclaimer

I will use content from the core rules, but will intentionally omit any content not published
on the official Pathfinder SRD due to the
unmanageable volume of non-SRD content, and the wildly varying quality of non-SRD content.
If you would like me to write handbooks for specific content not published on the official
SRD, please email me and I will consider it on a case-by-case
basis. I will use the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build
handbooks. Also note that many colored items are also links to the Paizo SRD.

Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational.

Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances

Green: Good options.

Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character.

Temporary Note: Pathfinder Unchained and Occult Adventures were
both recently added to the SRD. I'm excited to explore them, and I am actively working
on adding their contents to my collection of handbooks. I appreciate your patience while
I make these changes.

Introduction

The Crossbowman is a challenge. Archers, including other crossbow builds, typically
rely on making numerous attacks in order to deal damage. The Crossbowman flies in the
face of this by depending on single shots made as readied actions. To really understand
this archetype, make sure to read the
Read Action rules.

Fighter Class Features

Hit Points: Between your d10 hit points and your heavy
amor, you are very durable.

Base Attack Bonus: The biggest and best in the game.

Saves: Your fortitude saves are good, but you will
need to invest in your other saves.

Proficiencies: You get the best proficiencies of any
class.

Skills: Fighters only get 2+ skills, and very few of
your skill choices are worthwhile, so you will likely dump intelligence.

Bonus Feats: The main reason to play a fighter.
Everything a fighter would want to take is a combat feat, and there are
enough options that you never have to play the same fighter twice.

Crossbowman Features

Deadshot (Ex): This ability defines how the archetype will
be played. Essentially, the Crossbowmen depends on readied actions. Applying half
of your dexterity to damage is nice, but it's hard to make it match up to the huge
damage gap provided by using a composite bow with rapid shot.

Crossbow Expert (Ex): Weapon training with crossbows. If
you're only to get that one attack off of a prepared action, you had better hit
with it.

Improved Deadshot (Ex): Very few enemies depend on dexterity
for AC, so this will rarely help you hit. If you had sneak attack, this would be
nice, but after 7 levels a dip into Rogue won't be very helpful.

Quick Sniper (Ex): The bonus to sniping is nice, but Stealth
isn't a class skill for you, and the archetype doesn't add it. The ability to return
fire is situationally useful, but it also unloads your crossbow so that you can't
take your prepared action shot unless you're using a repeating crossbow or have Rapid
Reload.

Greater Deadshot (Ex): Finally. This is a small damage boost
for Deadshot. Crossbow damage still isn't great, but every little bit helps. By this point
your Dexterity should be fairly impressive.

Safe Shot (Ex): Saves you the trouble of taking
Point Blank Master.

Pinpoint Targeting: Pinpoint Targeting is a decent feat, especially
against high AC enemies. Armor, Natural Armor, and Shields are the sorts of bonuses
which a typical tank relies on, and this will let you get past their AC. However, it
prevents you from using things like Vital Strike, which might mean you sacrifice
damage for reliability.

Meteor Shot (Ex): Bull Rush or
Trip with a ranged attack. Neither help you much, but
they might help your allies.

Penetrating Shot (Ex): I certainly hope you took Improved
Critical. This makes critical hits with crossbows really exciting, but it's fairly
difficult to set up, and it's certainly not reliable until you get Weapon Mastery.

Weapon Mastery (Ex): With 19-20x3 crit, your critical hits
won't be spectacularly often, but they will be better than with a bow. Combined with
Penetrating Shot, this might see a fair bit of action.

Compatible Archetypes

Gladiator: Have you ever watched someone very
patiently load and fire a crossbow? It's not terribly exciting. Now bring that
into performance combat.

Abilities

The Crossbowman is remarkably SAD compared to most fighters. You can dump 3
abilities and probably won't even notice.

Str: Crossbows don't touch strength at all, so you can
dump it to 7 without affecting anything but your carrying capacity.

Dex: Your bread and butter.

Con: Keep those hit points high.

Int: Your skills are garbage, and you don't need Combat
Expertise..

Wis: Will saves are fighter's biggest shortcoming, and
even a little bit of Wisdom goes a long way to keep you alive.

Cha: Less talking, more shooting.

25 Point Buy

20 Point Buy

15 Point Buy

Str: 7

Dex: 18

Con: 16

Int: 7

Wis: 16

Cha: 7

Str: 7

Dex: 18

Con: 14

Int: 7

Wis: 16

Cha: 7

Str: 7

Dex: 18

Con: 14

Int: 7

Wis: 14

Cha: 7

Races

All we really need is a bonus to Dexterity.

Dwarf: The bonuses to Constitution and Wisdom are nice
because they make the Crossbowman nice and durable, and the Dwarf gets a whole bunch
of other great defensive abilities, but no bonus to Dexterity.

Elf: Bonus to a good stat and a dump stat, penalty to
a good stat. Other abilities don't really get us much.

Gnome: Nothing we want but Constitution. Being small
hurts our already poor damage.

Half-Elf: The flexible ability bonus is good, and
the Half-Elf has lots of great options for alternate racial traits. Ancestral Arms
can get us access to the Double Crossbow, making the Half-Elf at least on par with
the Human if you plan to use one.

Half-Orc: Flexible ability bonus and Darkvision,
but nothing specifically heolpful for the Crossbowman.

Halfling: Nothing we want but Dexterity. Being small
hurts our already poor damage.

Human: The ability bonus goes into Dexterity, and we
get a feat. Because crossbows require more feats to be viable than bows, the extra
feat is very important.

Survival (Wis): Situational, but helpful for
tracking if you don't have a Ranger handy.

Swim (Str): Too situational.

Cross-Class Skills

Perception (Wis): Even though it's cross-class, Perception
will see more use than any other skill.

Stealth (Dex): Required for Return Fire, but Return
Fire is awful, so don't worry about it.

Feats

Blind Fight: It's hard to say if you will want
this or not. You only get one shot per round, so it hurts to miss, but it's also
very hard to ready an action in response to something that you can't see.

Deadly Aim: Required. You only get one shot, and
you're practically guranteed to hit because you're not taking penalties to use
Rapid Shot and you're not making iterative attacks. Get all the damage you can
find.

Point-Blank Shot: Required for more important feats.
Don't feel compelled to try to get within 30 feet.

Far Shot: Crossbow range is pretty good
already, and a -2 penalty to go into your second range increment isn't
really important past very low levels.

Precise Shot: You will probably have allies
in melee because you're not in melee, so you need Precise shot to
avoid the horrific penalties to attack.

Improved Precise Shot: Ignore cover
and partial concealment. Not as important for you as for rogues
or people who have to worry about hitting, but nice to have
when you have big dumb allies wander into your line of fire.

Pinpoint Targeting: You
get it for free, but if you take it early you can take
another feat in its place when you get it as a class
feature. Unfortunately, Pinpoint Targeting doesn't
work with Vital Strike, which is our primary source
of damage.

Rapid Shot: You can't ready a full attack.

Rapid Reload: Required for any crossbow user.

Vital Strike: Double weapon damage as a Standard
Action, so you can Ready it.

Improved Vital Strike: Triple weapon
damage.

Greater Vital Strike: Quadruple
weapon damage.

Devastating Strike: This feat is severely
limited by the +6 damage bonus cap. If not for this limit, this feat
would be the most important feat in the Vital Strike chain. Still, +6
damage with no penalty is pretty great.

Improved Devastating Strike:
Critical hits are not a crucial part of Vital Strike, as your
bonus critical damage will likely be dwarfed by your bonus
damage dice. However, if you still want to build with critical
hits in mind (and you will have the feats to do so), the +6 bonus
is better than what you get from Critical Focus, and the bonuses
stack.

Weapon Focus: More attack bonus never hurts, but
you should almost never need to worry about missing.

Greater Weapon Focus: More attack bonus if
you really need it for some reason.

Penetrating Strike: DR becomes very common
at high levels, but ranged weapons are generally great for bypassing
DR because you can switch ammunition easily. You also rely on one big
attack, so DR isn't as problematic as it is for those who make lots
of attacks.

Greater Penetrating Strike: See
Penetrating Strike.

Weapon Specialization: 2 damage isn't much,
but you need all the damage you can get.

Greater Weapon Specialization: A
little more damage

Weapons

Double Crossbow: I almost made the mistake of building
this archetype around the Double Crossbow, but because the damage die is smaller
than the Heavy Crossbow, the Heavy Crossbow does as much damage and requires less
Feats to make it viable.

Heavy Crossbow: With Rapid Reload, you can use your
move action to reload, then ready your standard action for Deadshot. The Heavy
Crossbow has the biggest damage die, so it works best with Vital Strike.

Light Crossbow: With Rapid Reload, you can reload
as a free action, leaving your move action open to get around. If you prefer to
be highly movile at the expense of damage, Light Crossbow is the way to go.

Repeating Heavy Crossbow: Rapid Reload would be a
better investment of a feat than Exotic Weapon Proficiency.

Armor

Armor is presented in the order in which you should acquire it, rather than
alphabetical order.

Studded Leather: Your starting point. Dump it as
soon as you can afford a Mithral Shirt.

Buckler: I don't know why more people don't use
bucklers. A masterwork buckler is 165gp, has no armor check penalty, and doesn't
prevent you from using your off hand. Your off hand is going to be empty anyway,
and you need all the AC you can get. When you start having enough gold to enhance
your armor, enhance your buckler first because it has no maximum dexterity
bonus, and you won't need to trade up.

Mithral Shirt: Your best bet for almost your entire
career. Don't upgrade until you hit 30 Dexterity at very high levels.

Haramaki: Your sub-epic armor of choice..

Cross-Classing and Prestige Classes

There are lot of multiclass possibilities for any Fighter. After getting Greater
Deadshot at level 11 or Safe Shot at level 13, you might consider dropping out of
Fighter and exploring another class instead.

Alchemist: A two level dip into Alchemist can get
you the Extra Arm mutation, which gives you a free hand with which to reload your
crossbow. This isn't relevant to most crossbowmen, but it allows you to do crazy
things like use two-weapon fighting with hand crossbows. Unfortunately, this
doesn't take advantage of Deadeye, so you may want to use vanilla Figther instead
of Crossbowman.

Example Build - The Vital Strike Crossbowman

I ready a vital strike for when he inhales.

I want to badly for this archetype to be fun and playable, but it really just
isn't. All that this archetype can do is damage, and it doesn't even do that very
well. This is my best attempt to salvage the archetype until someone decides for
certain that Vital Strike works with a double crossbow.

Abilities

We will assume the 25-point buy abilities suggested above, but the other
suggested abilities can also use this build without any problems.

Race

It doesn't really matter.

Skills

Perception. If you're Human, pick up Knowledge (Dungeoneering).

Traits

Reactionary and History of Heresy.

Levels

Level

Feat(s) and Features

Notes and Tactics

1

Feat: Rapid Reload

Bonus Feat: Point-Blank Shot

Low levels are very boring for the Crossbowman. You get one
attack every round for 1d10 damage. It's kind of sad, really.

2

Bonus Feat: Precise Shot

Well at least now your allies aren't in the way as much.

3

Feat: Deadly Aim

Deadshot

Deadshot gives you 2 points of damage at this level, and Deadly
Aim adds another 2. 1d10+4 damage is more than a composite bow will
probably do, and you're more likely to hit, but you only get one
try so don't mess it up.

4

Bonus Feat: Weapon Focus

Ability Increase: Dexterity

2 more damage from Deadly Aim increases your damage bonus to +6.
It's not much, but it's all that you have going for you at the moment.

5

Feat: Weapon Specialization

Crossbow Expert +1

3 more damage between Crossbow expert and Weapon Specialization.
Can you feel the depression setting in?

6

Bonus Feat: Vital Strike

Finally! Now you can start doing what this build was meant to do.
Assuming your using a Large Heavy Crossbow, your damage just went
from 2d8+9 to 4d8+9, and average gain of 9 damage. This still isn;t

7

Feat: ANY

Improved Deadshot

Ooh, now people are flat-footed when you ready an action to shoot
them. All of those Rogues and Ninjas are going to be very scared.
You're out of feats for which you qualify and which we actually want,
so take Dodge, Toughness, or Iron Will.

8

Bonus Feat: Greater Weapon Focus

Ability Increase: Dexterity

One more point to hit, and your dexterity should be 20 or 22
before your belt now. I assume you have a belt of dexterity. You do
have one of those, don't you? You don't? Oh. Well, bless your heart.

9

Feat: Devastating Strike

Quick Sniper

This is where the build stops being a cruel joke.

Devastating strike is a nice bit of extra damage, and at this
level you can afford to be permanently Enlarged and to purchase a
large +1 Impact Heavy Crossbow. When your crossbow increases to
match your size, you're firing as a Gargantuan Crossbow for 4d8
base damage. Combined with Vital Strike, that's 8d8, and Devastating
Strike adds 6 damage to that. That's an average of 42 damage before
you even look at your normal damage bonuses from enhancement, weapon
specialization, etc.

I hate Quick Sniper. I hate it so much. It doesn't make any sense
on a Fighter.

10

Bonus Feat: ANY

Another particularly dull level.

11

Feat: Improved Vital Strike

Greater Deadshot

Have another 4d8 damage. You get to use your whole Dexterity
bonus for damage now, which is nice, but that's probably like 3 or
4 more damage than you were already doing, so it's not a big deal
compared to the extra 4d8.

12

Bonus Feat: Greater Weapon Specilization

Ability Increase: Dexterity

2 more damage. It's depressing that this is the best we can do
with such a high level feat.